The day is June 13, 2023. The Cardinals drop an 11-3 game at home to the Giants. The game immediately ends, and Chip Caray calls it a “clunker from top to bottom.” The Cardinals go on to finish 71-91, resulting in their first last place finish since 1990.
Fast forward to July 19. 2025, and the Cardinals have a similar result, losing 10-1 to the Diamondbacks and dropping to fourth place in the NL Central.
This will just be a straight recap instead of me getting into takeaways, as the only real takeaway is that the Cardinals laid a big turd for the second straight night. The start was ominous. Corbin Carroll tripled and scored on a Geraldo Perdomo base hit.
Then, when it appeared the Cardinals had gotten out of the inning, Pedro Pages was called for catcher’s interference, which allowed Eugenio Suarez to come to the plate. He hit a two-run homer and the game was out of reach from there.
Sonny Gray was awful tonight, allowing nine runs, eight of them earned on 11 hits over 3 1⁄2 innings. The Diamondbacks touched him for two more in the second on hits by Blaze Alexander and Perdomo again.
Suarez hit his second homer of the night in the bottom of the third and Corbin Carroll tripled home a run in the fourth to make it 7-0. Perdomo picked up his third hit to bring Carroll in once more. At that point, Oli Marmol had seen enough and replaced Gray with Gordon Graceffo. Gray’s final run scored on a double by Adrian Del Castillo.
To be fair, Graceffo settled things down a little, going 3 2⁄3 scoreless innings before giving way to John King, who allowed a run on an RBI groundout by Perdomo.
The Cardinals only tally came on an Alec Burleson home run in the top of the sixth to make it 9-1, but it was too little too late. Ryne Nelson, who has given the Cardinals fits in the past, gave Arizona six innings of one-run ball. Former Cardinal Jake Woodford pitched 2 2⁄3 scoreless innings before handing things over to Kyle Backhus for the final out of the game.
The Cardinals are now 51-48 and 8 1⁄2 games back in the NL Central. They still have hope in the Wild Card race, sitting just 2 1⁄2 back of the Padres for the final spot. However, having a chance mathematically isn’t the same as having a realistic chance to actually make the postseason, and if John Mozeliak wasn’t convinced tonight that he should sell at the trade deadline, I don’t know what will convince him. He’ll probably find some reason to take another half measure towards “improving” this team.
Miles Mikolas goes tomorrow against Merrill Kelly as the Cardinals try to avoid a sweep. God help us.
